Gangster

Joined:
Oct 16, 2014

Hi, Things have been quiet on the build front for some time now. I've been crazy busy. I'm now a married man and 8 weeks away from welcoming my first child into this world. I've continued to use JUICE as my daily driver and boy does it continue to impress. A couple months back I uploaded a quick snap showing a quick side panel mod I'd done in time for Insomnia 61 gaming festival. Having the side panel fitted makes the chassis as a whole much more stable.

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LAN was awesome (it always is), providing 5 days of freedom from the rest of daily life stresses. Shortly after I came back, I received a message from a dude called Victor. He'd seen my fabricator had fallen through and kindly offered up his time to help me out (what a guy!).

I sent him my CAD design for the Matrix Orb display bracket and he's run with it, correcting the mistakes I'd made and bashing out a prototype.

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Designed to attach to the 120mm fan mount on the S4 mini, Victor has opted to laser cut the design from acrylic. Then mill out where required and tap the holes.

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First attempt cut and ready for the mill.

Victor lives in the US and operates OPEN BOX STUDIOS I recommend you get in touch with him if you're looking for some design/fabrication work to be carried out.

Gangster

Joined:
Oct 16, 2014

Gangster

Joined:
Oct 16, 2014

I'm back folks, quick build update before the final shots go live on Monday. JUICE had always planned to have a tempered glass side panel. Josh over at NFC kindly hooked me up with a couple extra panels to aid my development a way to mount the glass.. which was easy enough. The vented portion of the panel was to be cut out leaving a frame (as the side panel makes up part of the chassis structural strength it had to be the basis for the tempered glass mod) to mount the glass. Which, was to be attached using six standoffs to provide enough clearance for ventilation. Easy right? Well, yeah... finding somewhere that could make the glass turned out to be far more expensive then I'd hoped. it's a small piece that needed to be tinted, tempered and have six mounting holes. When each of my quotes came back in the hundreds I decided to put a pin in it.

As I'm using the Noctua NF B9 REDUX, the fan sits just a few mm too high for the stock side panel to fit. This wasn't to be an issue with the tempered glass approach, so instead, I opted for a simple side panel cut out.

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Using one of the powder coated panels Josh sent ( I still have a beautiful BMW estoril blue side panel which I may give away to another S4 mini owner) I masked it off and marked out how I'd like it to look. The centre-left hole meant a clean, straight square frame wasn't an option. But that would have been boring anyway. So I left the vented section above that hole in place and kept a single vent down at the bottom right (a little nod to my love of Parvum Systems chassis).

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It was the first time using my oscillating tool and wow, for cutting at least, I've retired my dremel.

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I re-masked it and used some small hand files to clean up the lines.

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Then it was a couple primer coats (grey) and a couple more in a satin black automotive paint (It was all I had in my shed, left over from my old FT03 3D printed Matrix Orb mount, who remembers that?).

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Removed the tape and job done. you can see where the satin finish is still reflecting some light... I'd use matt black if I were to do it again.

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Really happy with how it turned out. With the panel in place the whole chassis is rock solid, zero flex.

So that's it. The final shots go up on Monday once Gigabyte shares them, soon after I'll do the final build log update. I'll post all the photos and talk a bit more about the Matrix Orb display.

Gangster

Joined:
Oct 16, 2014

Hi folks, well it's time to wrap this project up. JUICE came from a strong desire to build a LAN rig in the NFC Systems S4 mini chassis, to running it 24/7 as my daily driver. I'd have never thought I'd get so much performance from a 250 watt PSU. I've some plans to move to an i7 and GTX1080 using the HD-PLEX 300 Watt PSU and my current 330 DELL brick. But for now, it's finished and I'm delighted with it.

I want to extend a huge thank you to Josh from NFC Systems, the team at E22, my boys at Gigabyte UK and my eleventh-hour hero Victor at Open Box Studios. Without your help and support, it would never have happened.

So,

SPECS:

NFC SYSTEMS S4 MINI CUSTOM CHASSIS

INTEL CORE i5 - 6600K CPU

GIGABYTE GA-Z170N GAMING 5 MOBO

GIGABYTE GTX 1060 ITX OC 6G GPU

HYPERX FURY DDR4 2400MHZ 16GB (2X8GB) RAM

HYPERX 3K 240GB SSD X2

SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2-2280 250GB NVMe SSD

HDPLEX Hi-Fi 250W DC-ATX PSU

NOCTUA NH-L9i COOLER

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I'll be back in the new year with two projects, MODZERO JABBA and MODZERO 42. The later being my sequel to MODZERO FORTY. I've some exciting and originals plans underway for the HEX GEAR R40 chassis and can't wait to show you guys. Around the same time, I'll be doing another buddy build, MODZERO JABBA has been over two years in the making down at Parvum Systems and stands to be quite the eye turner when complete.

Gangster

Joined:
Oct 16, 2014

It was great to have been included in this year's Bit-Tech.net Mod of the year awards! Great to have received not only a nomination but an honourable mention in the final results too. Thanks for the votes chaps. I'll be back with two new builds this year (at least). Starting mayhaps with my MODZERO JABBA (custom Parvum System X2.0) build.